Proper maintenance of an orchard involves frequently clearing the area under the trees from various kinds of trash. Trimmings resulting from the pruning of the trees, accumulations of fallen fruit, and even brush that may have taken root in this area, must be removed to provide access to the trees, and to facilitate spraying for weed control. It is also desirable to prevent the accumulation of rotting fruit for a number of obvious reasons. Clearing these areas has been an unpleasant and time-consuming manual operation resulting in considerable expense.
Mechanical sweeping machines have long been utilized in other types of operation, such as street cleaning. Various combinations of horizontal and vertical-axis rotary brushes have been utilized to remove trash and dirt from particular areas, and urge such material into other positions where it can be picked up by other parts of the machine. Such mechanism may be considered as typical of a wide variety of applications utilizing the principle of a substantially vertical-axis rotor to move material across the ground to a position where it is picked up for disposal. Frequently, the axis of the rotor is tipped slightly forward in order to engage the advancing side of the rotor with the ground, rather than the rear side. This arrangement tends to control the direction in which the loose material is moved across the ground.